Recently, a demand for conducting a generic test using nucleic acid amplification has increased in a wide range of fields such as a clinical examination filed including infectious disease examination, a food field, and an environmental inspection field. Along with this, many test methods and test reagents have been developed for various test applications.
A test method used for detection of nucleic acid amplification includes PCR (polymerase chain reaction) and nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA).
In nucleic acid amplification, a temperature condition for amplification of nucleic acid varies for each of protocols specifying types of target nucleic acid and amplification techniques. The nucleic acid sequence-based amplification is carried out at a fixed temperature for nucleic acid amplification. On the other hand, PCR requires a temperature cycle of periodically varying the temperature of a sample by setting a plurality of temperature regions, so when the temperature cycle is repeated a given number of times, a nucleic acid amplification process is finished. In realtime PCR, a detection process for measurement (for example, fluorescent measurement) of nucleic acid amplification is further performed during the nucleic acid amplification process. An apparatus for automating processes of such nucleic acid amplification and detection performs a measurement operation for nucleic acid amplification while performing the temperature cycle for nucleic acid amplification, and then, after the temperature cycle was repeated by a given number of times as specified by a protocol, analysis with the processes is finished.
As a prior art for automating nucleic-acid amplification and detection, for example, Non-Patent Document 1 discloses an apparatus that has a plate holding a plurality of samples, and controls the temperature of the entire plate to be uniform.
This apparatus is of a batch processing type; hence, even if the apparatus has any empty loading position for a sample container, no sample can be added halfway after start of analysis.
In such a case, therefore, additional analysis must be started after completion of previous analysis, resulting in much time for obtaining the results.
Patent Document 1 discloses a technique, in which a sample holder is fixedly provided to hold a plurality of reaction containers each containing a sample and a reagent, and an optical sensor rotationally performs fluorescence detection of nucleic acid amplification in the reaction containers with fluorochrome-labeling. The technique, however, does not allow a new reaction container to be randomly loaded in a measurement section during measurement of a sample as in the above.